Category: Airspy

Airspy Competition Winners Announced

Last week the Airpsy team gave us the opportunity to give away some prizes, so we started a comment competition. The prizes were an Airspy R2 + SpyVerter, Airspy Mini + SpyVerter and SpyVerter. The competition closed yesterday with over 500 entries, and the winners have now been selected via random.org. Congratulations to the winners below:

Larry (Airspy R2 + SV)
If I am going to win something from this one stuff, me build internet remote receiver on hill in central Europe (CZ) for all readers and fans of rtl-sdr.com website, generally for all RTL SDR enthusiasts….. :-)))
Pour Felicitér 2017
Larry (Ladislav)

kevin (Airspy Mini + SV)
been a ham a couple years now. their are so many uses for sdr’s ! it’s so cool. just looking down the list of others comments, i was like ‘oh ya’ forgot about that idea. awhile back we did a demo at our ham club with a el cheapo sdr and it sparked some interest , would like to play around with some of the newest toys, worlds of diff in capabilities. ultimate goal is to find the right one for the clubs emergency trailer. seeing the bands and whats going on, is priceless :)

Josh (SpyVerter)
I’d love to finally get into the HF band!

If you’re a winner please check your email address for the competition winner email.

The competition produced some very interesting comments that show the diversity in projects that can be performed with a SDR receiver and we strongly encourage you to read through the comments if you are looking for project ideas.

If you didn’t win, sorry! Better luck next time. But please continue to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as we will have more competitions and more prizes to give away later in 2017!

Airspy New Year Competition: Comment to win Airspy and SpyVerter Prizes!

The team behind the Airspy have given us permission to give away three Airspy related prizes for the New Year Holidays! The first prize is an Airspy R2 + Spyverter, the second prize is an Airspy Mini + Spyverter and the third prize is a Spyverter.

The Airspy is a high performance yet low cost software defined radio with a 12-bit ADC and tuning range between 24 – 1800 MHz. It is an attractive device as its dynamic range exceeds all other SDRs in a similar price range. Its performance begins to approach that of the very high end expensive SDRs. High dynamic range means that weak and strong signals can coexist in the received spectrum without any overload occurring. We have previously written reviews of the Airspy R2 and Airspy Mini on our blog.

The Spyverter is a high performance upconverter that allows the Airspy to tune to LF/MW/HF frequencies between DC – 30 MHz. The Spyverter perfectly compliments an Airspy device as it is also a very high dynamic range device. It also works perfectly with the bias tee on our RTL-SDR.com V1/V2/V3 dongles. We previously reviewed the Spyverter here.

More information about these products can be found at airspy.com.

How to Enter

Competition is now finished. Winners will be announced and emailed shortly. Thanks to all who entered!

Winners: 

Larry (Airspy R2 + SV)
If I am going to win something from this one stuff, me build internet remote receiver on hill in central Europe (CZ) for all readers and fans of rtl-sdr.com website, generally for all RTL SDR enthusiasts….. :-)))
Pour Felicitér 2017
Larry (Ladislav)

kevin (Airspy Mini + SV)
been a ham a couple years now. their are so many uses for sdr’s ! it’s so cool. just looking down the list of others comments, i was like ‘oh ya’ forgot about that idea. awhile back we did a demo at our ham club with a el cheapo sdr and it sparked some interest , would like to play around with some of the newest toys, worlds of diff in capabilities. ultimate goal is to find the right one for the clubs emergency trailer. seeing the bands and whats going on, is priceless 🙂

Josh (SpyVerter)
I’d love to finally get into the HF band!

The winners were randomly selected using random.org, and all have now been emailed. If you’re a winner, please check your email and spam folder just in case.

Thank you all for participating! It’s really great to see all the variety in what projects people are doing. There were about 500 valid entries resulting in about a 0.6% chance of winning. Keep an eye out for future contests!

Simply make a comment on this post explaining what you’d do like to do with an Airspy or Spyverter if you won one.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT FORM.
The address will only be visible to us, and we promise not to use it for any other purpose.

Rules: The winners will be selected at random. One entry per person only. You must legally be allowed to receive the prize.

Draw closes in one week on 3 January 2017, 11:59PM UTC Time.

airspy_giveaway2

Airspy Mini Christmas Sale – $80 USD

The Airspy Mini is a software defined radio with a tuning range of 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth. It usually costs $99 USD and is the younger brother of the $149 USD Airspy R2.

Currently the manufacturer iTead is running a Christmas sale on the Airspy Mini. The sale price is $80 USD, which is a 19% saving. To get the sale price you need to click on the “Get coupon code here” link and then share the promotion to your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account.

Update: They have given us a special blog coupon code “AS-RTLSDR-BLOG“. Just use this code at the checkout and it will apply the discount without the need to share. Edit: The blog coupon appears to have stopped working, an alternative one that is still working is “as3“.

The sale lasts from December 20, 2016 – January 3, 2017.

If you want to see more about the Airspy Mini then see our review here. Our other previous review comparing the Airspy R2 against the SDRplay RSP and HackRF may also be of interest as the Mini’s performance is very similar to the R2.

The Airspy Mini iTead Christmas Sale
The Airspy Mini iTead Christmas Sale

New Comparison Videos from Leif SM5BSZ: Airspy vs SDRplay vs Several Other SDRs

Over on YouTube Leif SM5BSZ has uploaded two new videos. The first video shows a set up that compares the Airspy and the SDRplay RSP on several lab tests that test for dynamic range performance at various frequency offsets. The Airspy definitely shows better results, but Leif notes that the differences are fairly small. The Airspy and SDRplay are two SDRs that compete in the mid range SDR price bracket.

Smaller is better, where each value represents the amount of attenuation required before saturation
Smaller is better. Each value represents the amount of attenuation used (in dBm) that causes a 3dB loss from reciprocal mixing

As lab tests can only approximate real world performance, in the next video Leif does a HF reception comparison on a real world antenna. In this video he compares our RTL-SDR.com V3 in the special direct sampling HF mode, a Funcube Pro+, SDRplay RSP, Airspy+Sypverter, Afedri Net, and an FDM-S1. The test injects an artificial signal and combines signals from a real antenna via an adjustable attenuator. Leif adjusts the attenuator to increase the antenna signals until the test signal strength is degraded by 3dB from reciprocal mixing/overload. That attenuation setting is then recorded.

The results for the daytime and nighttime results results rank the SDR’s in order from best to worst: FSM-S1 ($400 + shipping), Afedri ($259 + shipping), Airspy+Spyverter ($218 + shipping/$149 + shipping (mini)), SDRplay ($129 + shipping), Funcube Pro+ ($155 + shipping), RTL-SDR.com V3 direct sampling ($20 incl shipping). Interestingly the performance seems to correlate nicely with the unit cost. Of course the V3 in direct sampling mode can be significantly improved by using filtering on the front end, or just by using an upconverter and quadrature mode instead.

At the end of the video Leif also shows a final ranking of the HF performance of all radios tested in his previous videos.

Night time reception SDR ranking
Night time reception SDR ranking
Daytime reception SDR ranking
Daytime reception SDR ranking
Final Ranking
Final Ranking

Portable Shortwave Spectrum Capture with an Airspy + Spyverter and Tablet

Over on his blog London Shortwave writes how difficult it can be trying to listen to shortwave radio stations when you’re indoors and in a big city filled with RF noise. His solution is a portable lightweight shortwave travel kit that he can take to the park. The kit that he recommends using includes an Airspy SDR with SpyVerter upconverter, a Toshiba Encore 8″ Tablet and an OTG USB adapter. His antenna is a portable dipole made from two pieces of 6m copper wire connected to a balun, then connected to the SDR with 3m of coax. The whole kit easily fits into a small metal brief case.

For the software London Shortwave uses SDR# and he enjoys capturing large chunks of the HF spectrum for replay later using the base band recorder and file player plugins for SDR#. In his post he also shows how he runs the Airspy in debug mode to restrict it to 6 MHz which is the maximum bandwidth that his tablet’s CPU can handle.

His post shows various example videos of his setup receiving some nice shortwave signals.

London Shortwave's SDR Kit.
London Shortwave’s SDR Kit.

Mile Kokotov’s SDR Overview and Dynamic Range Explanation

Mile Kokotov (Z33T) has been working on creating an overview page of some of the most popular software defined radios and software applications. In the past we’ve featured Mile’s videos several times on our blog and his page ties all the videos together nicely with text. On his page he briefly reviews the different types of RTL-SDR dongles as well as the Airpsy and SDRplay.

One very useful page he’s put together is his explanation of the “dynamic range” concept, which is probably the most important characteristic when it comes to a radio. According to Miles description dynamic range measures the ability of a radio to “receive very weak and very strong signals at the same time, without overloading”. His page also explains how decimation in software can help improve the dynamic range without needing to improve the hardware.

Mile’s page is not yet 100% finished, so we advise you to keep an eye on it for new information.

Explaining dBFS (decibels relative to full scale)
Explaining dBFS (decibels relative to full scale)

Setting up a GOES Weather Satellite Antenna System

Many people with an RTL-SDR have had fun receiving NOAA and METEOR low earth orbit (LEO) weather satellite images. However, a step up in difficulty is to try and receive the geostationary orbit (GEO) weather satellites like GOES. These satellites are locked to a fixed position in the sky meaning there is no need to do tracking, however since they are much further away than LEO satellites, they require a 1m+ satellite dish or high gain directional antenna to have a chance at receiving the weak signal. The GOES satellites transmit very nice high resolution full disk images of the earth, as well as lots of other weather data. For more information see this previous post where we showed devnulling’s GOES reception results, and this post where we showed @usa_satcom’s presentation on GOES and other satellites.

Over on his blog and Twitter account (@lucasteske) Lucas Teske has been documenting his work in building a GOES receive system. The SDR he uses mostly is an Airspy, but recently he showed that our RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle is also capable at receiving the GOES signal.

The nice thing about Lucas’ post is that he documents his entire journey, including the failures. For example after discovering that he couldn’t find a 1.2m offset satellite dish which was recommended by the experts on #hearsat (starchat), he went with an alternative 1.5m prime focus dish. Then after several failed attempts at using a helix antenna feed, he discovered that his problem was related to poor illumination of the dish, which meant that in effect only a small portion of the dish was actually being utilized by the helix. He then tried a “cantenna”, with a linear feed inside and that worked much better. Lucas also discovered that he was seeing huge amounts of noise from the GSM band at 1800 MHz. Adding a filter solved this problem. For the LNA he uses an LNA4ALL.

To position the antenna Lucas used the Satellite AR app on his phone. This app overlays the position of the satellite on the phone camera making it easy to point the satellite dish correctly. He also notes that to improve performance you should experiment with the linear feeds rotation, and the distance from the dish. His post of full of tips like this which is very useful for those trying to receive GOES for the first time.

In future posts Lucas hopes to show the demodulation and decoding process.

GOES received with the dish, LNA4ALL, filter and an Airspy.
GOES signals received with the dish, LNA4ALL, filter and an Airspy.

Leif (SM5BSZ) Compares Several HF Receivers

Over on YouTube well known SDR tester Leif (SM5BSZ) has uploaded a video that compares the performance of several HF receivers with two tone tests and real antennas. He compares a Perseus, Airspy + SpyVerter, BladeRF + B200, BladeRF with direct ADC input, Soft66RTL and finally a ham-it-up + RTLSDR. The Perseus is a $900 USD high end HF receiver, whilst the other receivers are more affordable multi purpose SDRs.

If you are interested in only the discussion and results then you can skip to the following points:

24:06 – Two tone test @ 20 kHz. These test for dynamic range. The ranking from best to worst is Perseus, Airspy + SpyVerter, Ham-it-up + RTLSDR, Soft66RTL, BladeRF ADC, BladeRF + B200. The Perseus is shown to be significantly better than all the other radios in terms of dynamic range. However Leif notes that dynamic range on HF is no longer as important as it once was in the past, as 1) the average noise floor is now about 10dB higher due to many modern electronic interferers, and 2) there has been a reduction in the number of very strong transmitters due to reduced interest in HF. Thus even though the Perseus is significantly better, the other receivers are still not useless as dynamic range requirements have reduced by about 20dB overall.

33:30 – Two tone test @ 200 kHz. Now the ranking is Perseus, Airspy + SpyVerter, Soft66RTL, BladeRF+B200, Ham-it-up + RTLSDR, BladeRF ADC.

38:30 – Two tone test @ 1 MHz. The ranking is Perseus, Airspy + SpyVerter, BladeRF + B200, ham-it-up + RTLSDR, Soft66RTL, bladeRF ADC. 

50:40 – Real antenna night time SNR test @ 14 MHz. Since the Perseus is know to be the best, here Leif uses it as the reference and compares it against the other receivers. The ranking from best to worst is Airspy + SpyVerter, ham-it-up + RTLSDR, BladeRF B200, Soft66RTL, BladeRF ADC. The top three units have similar performance. Leif notes that the upconverter in the Soft66RTL seems to saturate easily in the presence of strong signals.

1:13:30 – Real antenna SNR ranking for Day and Night tests @ 14 MHz. Again with the Perseus as the reference. Ranking is the same as in 3).

In a previous video Leif also uploaded a quick video showing why he has excluded the DX patrol receiver from his comparisons. He writes that the DX patrol suffers from high levels of USB noise.